Now as we sped past the giant green sun to the left, the line of serpent-ships between our own vast line and that sun, their ships were all but invisible to us against the blinding glare of that sun. Swiftly they took advantage of this, their pale beams leaping toward us with renewed fury, while in that dazzling glare our shafts of force could only be loosed upon them as we chanced to glimpse or guess their position. I saw ships in our line all about and behind us reeling away as the beams raked them, and then set my teeth, pressed a single one of the keys before me. At once all our great line of ships bore toward the left, against the line of the serpent-ships! Toward them we slanted, even as we raced with them past the tremendous green sun, and then our line was pressing against their own, our ships colliding with theirs, oval ships and flat craft vanishing in great wrecks of metal as they crashed into each other, beams and force-shafts leaping thick from line to line as we bore inward against them. Involuntarily, though, their line gave beneath the terrific pressure of our own, veered to the left farther to escape that pressure, toward the great green sun. Then, as it veered too far, that which I had hoped for came to pass, for at the terrific speed at which they were moving that inward swerve took a full two thousand of their ships into the outward-leaping prominences of that sun. Into those gigantic, outrushing tongues of green flame they blundered, a tiny swarm of midges in comparison to them, and in the next instant had vanished, only a few tiny jets of fire from the prominences' sides marking their end. Then we were past the great sun, were flashing on and into the galaxy's thronging suns that lay thick in the heavens all about us. The moments that followed live in my memory now as a mad time of insane, racing combat, of our two gigantic fleets, strung out still in their long lines, flashing inward into the galaxy and between its thundering suns at an unabated, awful speed, striking and soaring and falling with wild, unceasing fury as they plunged on. For now a score or more of great suns were looming close before us as we raced forward, crimson and white and yellow stars between which we reeled crazily and blindly as we grappled still in our vast running fight. Full before us a single one of them, a sun of brilliant white, was looming larger each instant as we sped toward it, and as we almost reached it the serpent-ships drove us inward toward it, striving to repeat our own maneuver, pressed us inward until its heat was terrific even through our insulated walls, until almost we were within the limits of the glowing, stupendous corona!